Week 3 - Robotics and Art

This week, through Prof. Vesna’s lectures, I learned that industrialization affected art in profound ways because it introduced new technologies that challenged old notions of art creation. The invention of the metal movable type changed how knowledge was disseminated, and the discovery of electricity contributed to the trend of mechanization throughout society, where machines would work alongside humans to increase production of goods.

Electricity was so revolutionary that it led to the spawning of a plethora of technologies that helped drive various, new art forms (e.g. photography) as well as art movements. For instance, Romanticism emerged as a reaction to industrialization by emphasizing intense emotion and individualization in art, while Realism embraced industrialization by depicting contemporary people and everyday situations as objectively as possible.

Third Class Carriage (Realism)

Wanderer above the Sea of Fog (Romanticism)

What’s most fascinating to me is that just as technology influenced art, so art influenced technology. Da Vinci envisioned automata that imbues machine with the sentience of humans; in the early 20^th century, the actual concept of robots was born through a theatrical work as a response to mechanization. Mary Shelley’s classic literary work Frankenstein provides a warning about man using science to play God and influenced countless science fiction books, presenting many ideas that have turned into technologies today from cloaking devices to even gene editing techniques.

However, the essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” by writer Benjamin Walter describes a potential negative impact on art due to industrialization, arguing that mechanical reproduction of art is replacing originality and uniqueness with universality and reproducibility. Photography was one point of criticism, but I’d personally vouch that there is beauty to be found in “mechanical reproduction,” as seen in many of Andy Warhol’s works. One example is Triple Elvis, which, though it repeats a photographic still of Elvis three times, is visually striking for the painting’s large dimensions, its symbolic effect of mimicking a film strip, and the subject’s huge reputation. It really all comes down to interpretation.

Triple Elvis

Works Cited

Benjamin, Walter. The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. London: Penguin, 2008. Print.

Brogan, Jacob. “Why Frankenstein Is Still Relevant, Almost 200 Years After It Was Published.” Slate Magazine, 3 Jan. 2017, www.slate.com/articles/technology/future_tense/2017/01/why_frankenstein_is_still_relevant_almost_200_years_after_it_was_published.html.

Daumier, Honoré. “The Third-Class Carriage.” Artble, 1864, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, New York, www.artble.com/artists/honore_daumier/paintings/the_third-class_carriage.

Friedrich, Caspar David. “Wanderer above the Sea of Fog.” Artble, 1818, Hamburger Kunsthalle, Hamburg, Germany, www.artble.com/artists/caspar_david_friedrich/paintings/wanderer_above_the_sea_of_fog.

Pavlac, Brian A. “Art History for Chapter 11.” A Concise Survey of Western Civilization, 17 Jan. 2017, www.concisewesternciv.com/arth/ar11.html.

Smith, Nicole. “Analysis of ‘Frankenstein’ by Mary Shelley : Morality Without God.” Article Myriad, 6 Dec. 2011, www.articlemyriad.com/analysis-frankenstein-mary-shelley/.

Vesna, Victoria. “Robotics pt1.” Robotics + Art. 15 Apr. 2012. Lecture.

Warhol, Andy. “Triple Elvis [Ferus Type].” SF MOMA, 1963, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, California, www.sfmoma.org/artwork/FC.556.